Whose Angel Keyring Read Free Page A

flattened the box, but then a glint of metal caught her eye.
    On her floor lay a key ring she didn’t recognize. Lifting it, she examined it more closely. An expensive gold ring lay in her hand—fourteen carat at least. A little angel was attached, and a small key. The workmanship was excellent—Tiffany or Cartier, she’d guess, but no name was stamped into the metal. If she’d seen the key or its holder before, she’d have remembered. And how it got into one of her boxes, she didn’t know. But in the tearful chaos of clearing out Zackery’s house, she must have grabbed it inadvertently, swept up with some clothing.
    An angel . . . this is a feminine thing, she flashed. A gift from another woman?
    She fingered the burnished gold, jealousy clutching at her innards. But this was old. The delicate work, the archaic style —they signaled not a new gift, but the probability of a family heirloom.
    Cynthia plunked down on her sofa to think. Now what do I do? she wondered. The last thing she wanted was to see Zackery, or even call him. But clearly, this was his property. And for all she knew, he might have been desperate to find it, never thinking to ask her. Not that she’d have known about it herself, but for the odd chance of breaking down her cardboard boxes.
    Dangling the key ring, she studied the childlike angel—a cherub whose round belly and pudgy cheeks made it seem ready to burst with the promise of things to come.
    It was strange—something so beautiful and mysterious showing up today. Somehow it took the sting out of unpacking the boxes. It swept away the anger that had puffed her sails, leaving her becalmed in her living room.
    Suddenly the energy Cynthia’d turned outward and tried to spend in blame, now turned inward, and, as the tears came, she began spending it in self-examination.
    She’d wanted the relationship with Zackery so badly, she’d made assumptions. When she might have waited with some sense of trust, she’d pushed with a sense of urgency; where she might have listened, she’d filled every moment with words; and she’d indulged every pang of emotional and physical hunger, putting her own needs before anyone else’s. And now, she’d scraped his home so bare, she’d come away with a precious object that did not belong to her.
    After a long, tearful think, a simple solution came to her.

    James struggled to gain control over the kitchen at Calma’s main house. The dining room was already arranged. The newly
    polished brass candelabras held red candles, bright ribbons circled all the napkins, and place cards printed in calligraphy completed settings for seven: the Calvins, their two lady friends and the three neighbors who had been invited to join them.
    But in the kitchen, on one counter an electric mixer whirred in a bowl of fresh, heavy cream, with no result: the white liquid remained flat as the blank stare of a child on his first day of mathematics. On another counter, the crook arm of a bread- beater punished heavy waffle batter like a naughty boy told to beat the folds of a blanket in the wind.
    On the stove, water bubbled in a poacher, while eggs— liberated from their shells—quivered in their unfamiliar metal cups, as though they were nursery-schoolers quaking anxiously off-stage waiting for their entrance. Two burners away, in a huge, stainless pan, bacon hissed and spat like adolescents taunting the younger kids next door. James rummaged through lids in a cupboard, then dashed to cover the unruly meats before their sputtering oil damaged the delicate eggs.
    He knew why he felt like an incompetent Headmaster today, unable to govern his disobedient charges. The real source of today’s apparent disorder had nothing to do with ingredients, recipes or devices. It was the women. Trying to resign himself to the attendant chaos the female sex brought to Calma, James sighed and inspected the still-flat cream. Removing the bowl from the electric contraption, he began with vigor to